While I wasn't looking. I just turned five.

Ready for HubPages Kindergarten. Looking back, I should have more to show for my time here-- though I have deleted or repurposed some of my hubs.Thank you HubPages for providing such a friendly platform and community, I have enjoyed it , learned much, and promise to do a little better in the future.

Congratulations, Rochelle! I'm always in awe when I talk to writers here who were smart enough to start out in the early years. Wish I'd heard of HP back then! Here's wishing you a productive and prosperous five years ahead!

Thank You, Marcy. There is smart and then there's lucky. I was participating a bit on a website of writers when I saw that one of them mentioned HubPages.Donna C Smith is a very talented writer who has several hubs here, especially about N. Carolina and horses. She has several published books-- and I'm glad to giver her a shout out.Look her up. My grandchildren loved her historical fiction... and she also has some non-fiction works.

Yes, Lorlie it does creep-- and it tends to get creepier. I know I owe you a reply to a question that you asked me about Yosemite lodging-- and routes. I looked around, but have not really seen anything that is not available on the net. I did write a promo for Big Creek Lodge in Fish Camp--- but when you are coming from your side of the mountain it is just too bad that you can't take the "as the crow flies" route. Now that Tioga Pass is open, that's an option. It is a steep winding road for the driver, but beautifully spectacular.

Don't worry about the reply, we've been feverishly planning on Tioga's opening before June of this year, and whoopee, it is! Lee Vining is only around 60 miles from our home, so that'll be our choice.Thanks for going to all the trouble, though!xx

Thank you, Richard. It's true-- the years fly by faster as you keep accumulating them! I thought I was only a little over four. Iam afraif to read your hot chocolate recipe; I might be drawn over to the dark side.

Congrats Rochelle! Five years is a long time and I hope you had a blast through it all. I just recently hit my first year mark last month and this year was the most productive of my writing life. The time does fly when on this site. I hope you have another great year here.

When some new spam filters were added to HP a few years later, all my Greek art and mythology educational hubs got locked as "overly promotional," so I just deleted and moved them to a different site (I now realize that my image photo credits must've tripped the two outbound link limit). Therefore I'm not sure of the exact date when I started here.

I had the same problem with image photo credits causing some of my hubs to flag up as overly promotional. It was because I had several images all from Morguefile and attributed back to the source correctly with a link to the original image. I emailed the HP Team about it and they removed the flag so the hubs no longer showed as being overly promotional. Might be worth bearing in mind in case this ever happens to you again.

Yep. I solved it by making only the first image credit a link and the rest merely captions. It's just that at the time, I was busy with grad school, and I didn't have the patience to figure out what the new filters were fussing about. Now I know.

Anyway, congratulations, Rochelle! You've stuck with it, whereas I was MIA for a couple years!

The slight problem with how you dealt with it is that if the owner of the image was under a 'CC BY' license that required a link back to them you would not have fulfilled their conditions for use of the image by only attributing the site on one image. I attribute those images back to the exact page they were on nowadays. I guess from now on though at least you know if you have this problem again you can still keep within the license terms, and if you get an overly promotional warning as a result you can ask HP to remove it

Congrats Rochelle! It's always good to see posts from hubbers that have stood the test of time and patience in HubPages. I'm fairly new here and was a bit worried at first by a number of naysayers that I saw posting on here about Google issues and reduced traffic, but despite all of that negative talk I've only posted a handful of hubs and they are doing quite well, every single one has been featured since I started. I've found here that writing style is key and many people seem to like my style. I've had years of successful blogging experience in my own WordPress blogs and I've had tons of readers and followers with those, so I simply re-applied all that I've learned in those here on HubPages, and so far it's been successful for me. All this being said, I hope to say happy 10th birthday to you when I hit my 5th here on HubPages!

I hope we can both celebrate those anniversaries.Overall, HubPages is a friendly and positive community. People tend to make comparisons and get all negative about a lot of petty things-- but HP allows that to an extent. I think the best approach is to just compare yourself to your former self-- if you are making progress, it's all good.My thought is-- If you don't like it, you are free to experiment with other strategies. I you still don't like it, you are free to leave. HubPages is a business that provides a service and an opportunity to writers. It isn't obligated to adjust to each person's wants and needs, even though it does seem to consider its users in a friendly and interactive way. Give it a good try and see if you are getting the personal return that you value.

It was the community involvement from people like you that first attracted me to joining this site. So I thank you for the positive influence that you had in my decision to write here and that excellent sense of humor and wisdom of yours, that many of us had the opportunity to experience!

Congratulations Rochelle. Your Hubs were one of the first I ever read. Your comments are always perceptive and you always conduct yourself with good grace and charm. Hope you are still up for the next five years and then the next ....

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I just received an email from HubPages that today is my 5 year anniversary on HubPages! When did you join HubPages and are you a Happy Hubber?I can't believe it's already been 5 years. Joining HubPages has definitely...